


Selfish

by BigEvilShine



Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect 3 - Fandom
Genre: Destroy Ending, F/M, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 18:48:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6578197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BigEvilShine/pseuds/BigEvilShine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard wakes up post destroy ending. She's given so much of herself in this war it's become near another challenge to let herself want shamelessly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Selfish

Shepard woke alone.

There was no dramatic moment of clawing her way out of the rubble of the citadel, no more pushing herself past the brink and beyond just to breathe. Instead it was sterile fluorescent lights that greeted her with the wheeze and tick of hospital equipment and the stale taste of tubing snaking down her throat. Needles and sticky patches of monitoring probes peppered the parts of her that were wrapped and taped in gauze or protected in an exoskeleton of hard casts. The medical staff, more volunteers than trained professionals, kept her conscious hours in control. It would take time and resources they didn’t have to fully wake her and Shepard only blinked at their explanations. It was enough.

She could rest. 

The new post reaper world met her as a slow tide that easily pushed into her empty medicated sleep, quick whispers from the visiting staff about the recovering earth and universe beyond. By the time she heard the low apologetic voice of her primary physician, felt the cool touch of the asari’s hand as she demonstrated how to put on her new left leg, Shepard thought herself stable enough to finally wake up.

The reapers scorched her earth. Medical treatments that would have returned her skin to its satiny texture, brought her a cloned limb, were all too strained. Resources were scant, communications dodgy, and the celebrations of survival had long passed in favor of somber rebuilding. When Shepard finally grew accustomed to her unfeeling leg, to the tightness of her burn scars, to the two missing fingers on her right hand and how her eyes watered intensely from any light brighter than a candle, the Normandy’s crew had returned.

“Damn. And I thought I looked like shit.” Garrus’s throat clicked coarsely, the only warning before Shepard was wrapped in wiry turian arms and enveloped in frantic purring. Shepard choked on her own cough, securing the tinted visor back in place before the moisture in her strained eyes grew worse. Tali and Liara strong armed their way past Garrus, the quarian’s helm steaming up as she hiccupped through sobs while Liara buried her face in Shepard’s shoulder. 

“You were dead.”

“And you believed that?”

Surprisingly it wasn’t Vega that nearly broke her ribs all over again in a hug but Joker. Shepard hooked her most mobile arm around his shoulders, blunt nails digging familiarly into his uniform. 

No one mentioned EDI’s absence. 

Too many people lingered around her in what the hospital considered a mess hall. Shepard didn’t miss how her crew didn’t shy from touching her. Teasing shoulder brushes, fingers gently cupping her elbow, talons petting her hair. The contact would have made her uncomfortable if she weren’t doing the same. She brushed a thumb over Garrus’s scars, tugged on Tali’s hands, patted Vega’s back, rest her chin on Liara’s shoulder, squeezed Javik’s arm where their skin wouldn’t touch. They were real. Alive. Maybe the sacrifice had been worth it. 

Then she’d catch Joker’s eyes when he lingered on the edges of the group; see the empty smile when she jokingly called them both cripples. 

The crew dispersed, helping with recovery efforts as Shepard struggled to get back to some semblance of independence. Funerals and vigils for the dead were small pockets of quiet in the flurry of rebuilding. Tears were hard to come by after a certain point, then came a velvet blessing of calloused hearts and apathy. It wouldn’t last, maybe someday this emotional curtailing would crawl back to destroy her, but for now it was all she had to survive.

Blinking, Shepard endured the cold stinging spread of her medicinal eye drops. Slowly her eyesight was repairing, but the sensitivity was still questionable. Edges were blurry; lights were loud starburst of bleaching pain that stung her frayed nerves. Checking she’d secured her prosthesis she pushed from the cot, hiding her eyes behind dark glasses before venturing out. There was someone that had been on her mind, niggling at the lip of her thoughts over the past few days. Someone that had likely needed her help well before the final fray with the reapers. 

“Javik.”

The prothean half turned his head, two eyes pinning her. The ancient commander had slipped into place as an organizer of what remained of able bodied recovery efforts on earth. He looked well. Taller, prouder than how she remembered him. His scarlet armor shone dully in the late evening’s golden light. 

“You look good,” she moved to his side, looking out over the camp of aid workers and crates of organized supplies. Some groups had broken for supper, gathered around radios listening to the repair efforts to the mass relays or news from other worlds and colonies. Javik faced forward, hands clasped behind his back. 

“We have survived the reapers. For the first time I am free, my people avenged. Of course I am good.” Shepard smiled slightly at his confidence. Maybe it was his voice, how he carried himself or that river of almost comedic arrogance that sustained him, but she felt herself relax into a brief moment where she could almost forget damning so many innocents.

“Commander,” Javik’s thick rolling accent gently called her back to a harsh world that was only just blunted by his easy companionship, “I have had time to think while you recovered.”

“Penny for your thoughts?” she asked, shifting weight from one foot to another. At the look he shot her she rubbed her brow, “sorry, human idiom, just a way of waking what you have on your mind.”

He continued on as if she hadn’t spoken. “Before, we have talked of your motivations.”  
Shepard knew instantly which exchange he spoke of. It felt like years ago but the conversation was only weeks old in reality. They’d disagreed on her methods, her protective shielding of Legion and EDI from Javik’s prejudice. One occasion Javik had pushed her too far and Shepard had snapped, shouldering into his personal space, trapping him against his water table as she snarled her life’s quintessence in his face.

“The machines are slaves, Javik, they deserve as much of a chance as the krogan or your damn protheans. I will tear Harbinger apart with my fucking teeth because that’s what I have to do. I’m commander fucking Shepard and this is war with the reapers, with Harbinger, and if I can crush the fuckers under the chains of their own slaves then I will do it with a smile.” Her hands slammed onto the lip of the table top, chewed nails digging hard into the alloy surface and caging him in. “Sometimes I don’t like you Javik,” she’d laughed, a pop of surprised caustic sound, “I can’t decide if I fucking hate or love you but I will do more than make sure you get to live in a world without reapers. If you have to share the galaxy with a few synthetics then you will goddamn do it.”

She’d left him in the cargo hold after, all fury and flame she’d sought out and challenged Vega to some sparring to cool down. Shepard never heard another word about the machines out of Javik after that, though the smile EDI had given her on the bridge hinted she’d viewed the chastising with more than a touch of enjoyment. At the thought of her Shepard felt something in her chest wilt. 

“I thank you, Shepard,” Javik fully turned, blinking his too many eyes, “I thought it an impossible thing for those of this cycle, this promise you made. Clearly I was mistaken. I am…overwhelmed, now that the reapers are dead. I find there is much to consider now, things that none of my people had the opportunity to think upon for some time.”

“Wow,” Shepard coughed into her shoulder, shaking hands going to flip open the cap of her water canteen. Studiously not looking at her companion she drank, licking moisture from her lips. “That means a lot,” She croaked, fingers itching for something more, heart aching to turn her shallow words into thanks that reflected how she felt. 

“Fuck it,” she grasped his hand, damaged fingers lacing strangely with his. Javik inhaled through his nose sharply, back straightening, but he didn’t pull away. Shepard stared hard at their joined grip, blinking rapidly as the eye drops further blurred her vision. “Javik you deserve to be selfish for the rest of your fucking life. Hell, you’re a goddamn war hero twofold and whatever you do I’ll have your back. Just live for yourself, you know? A lot of people are…they’re not here anymore. Make their sacrifice worth it.” Scrubbing an errant tear from her cheek she felt her head spin slightly, withdrawal from the pain killers making itself known. She needed to get back to her cot at the barracks before she couldn’t keep her balance. 

“I’ll talk to you later – “she stopped, blurry gaze snapping to the tightened grip on her hand. Warily, her eyes crawled up his armored chest, coming to meet Javik’s fearsome glare. Then she felt it, a butterfly’s wing beat of crumbled memories stirring in the dust. Just as the smell of Thane’s favorite tea filled her mouth she clutched at Javik’s armor, muscles shaking as arms rough with scales curled securely around her waist. Shepard pressed flush into him, cheek resting on his chest as Thane slipped one hand beneath her shirt, tracing the over her hip, her spine, cool palm coming to rest flat between her shoulder blades.

“Siha.” 

Thane’s voice was beautiful, sand over stone and river flow over rock bed. Within that siren’s song, beneath the cool chest that she rest, the black curl of sickness already strangled his breathes. With ugly clarity Shepard recognized this memory. The one Javik had come across in life support, the one that he showed her when he’d asked after the ailing drell he’d found traces of throughout the Normandy. Like rainfall the image around her fell away, replaced with a London whose visage was crumbling knives of skyline, and strong arms around her were house in scarlet armor instead of dark leather. With a swallowed cry Shepard jerked in his hold, cowering back from it all even as Javik only grasped her tighter. 

“You speak these words but do you hear them? The dead are not honored by some self imposed seclusion,” he pulled them together more firmly, their bodies meeting at every line. Shepard grit her teeth, eyes shut tightly as she tried to pull free only for a calloused thumb to draw along her cheek and with it the blush of another memory. 

She was in her hard suit and dripping in weaponry, reloading while she and Javik shared cover. It was tight, cramped, their armor clinking together as they angled their way around one another. Soon she was half draped in prothean, his chest to her back and long crouched legs framing her own. It was uncomfortable, distracting, exhilarating. His first mission since he'd judged himself fit to fight again. Shepard swung her scope, an enemy lifted clear off the ground, momentarily suspended, her finger squeezed the trigger and rifle cracked the shot. The bullet ripped through the Cerberus grunt's helm, shattering skull and armor as grey matter erupted. The foamy tendrils of aquatic green biotics flared, tightened, and then slammed the grunt's body to the ground. Behind her Javik hummed his approval, the vibration pooling through his armor into hers and travelling to the apex of her thighs.

The memory shifted, tilted, melted and bloomed into Shepard's apartment. It was fresh after her attack at the sushi place, her dress still damp and smelling like fish with pieces of allegedly shatter proof glass stuck in her hair. Javik was laughing with her over her legendary escape from the ambush, Shepard leaning on her thighs as she tried to get a breath between guffaws. Then the evening flew forward, away into a time later, and they were in bed. Both clean and stripped of armor, legs and bodies damp with sweat caught in the sheets as they breathed liquor flavored kisses over one another. Blunt nails on too many fingers raked over hard plates, a mouth with too many teeth biting and scraping over silken skin as hips drove into hips. Hungry hands explored one another's alien anatomy until they'd mapped each other over and over, desperate to blur the lines of separation. With a final plunging thrust, her arching back and tightening thighs, the edges of the moment spilled into Shepard firmly denying herself the wish that she could have another night like that with Javik again, of telling herself she wanted nothing from him, it was only one night. It was only one puncture in the fog of grief for her late lover and failing world.

Her eyes snapped open and she clutched at Javik's armor, shaking her head. Tri fingered hands slid down her back, easing frayed nerves and stilling her trembling. "Javik, stop it, you don't want this. I'm not –”

"From your own lips I have been told to live for myself, to make the sacrifice of others worthwhile," he slipped a hand into her hair, tugging until her head tipped back and their eyes met. "You have told me to be selfish, commander. I will." Shepard would have been horrified at the broken sounding breath she made if she could focus on anything but Javik's mouth on hers. She stiffened in his hold, trembling hands moving to stroke his ribbed throat. She wanted to push away, keep herself whole and hidden, but Javik wasn't allowing it. Strong hand clamped at her hip, the other wrapping her hair until she bore her throat in offer. Lips and teeth met her pulse point, scraping livid hot lines in their fanged wake and his tongue lapped at the salted flavor of her skin. She keened as her sensitive burn scars were treated with such loving abuse.

Shepard's knees had turned to water; she relied entirely on the possessive grip to stay standing. She hadn't felt so filled to bursting in so long, her skin flushing hot and throbbing with each beat of her burning heart. Javik's rumbling sounds only made it all so much worse, bringing her neglected and healing body to a sublime ache. With the last scraps of her control she pushed free, stumbling back and catching herself against a crate.

"Uh," Shepard said smartly, catching her breath. "That, I wasn't – wow." She fully sat, giving into the fragility of her healing body and its unused muscle mass. Javik crooked a smile, sauntering to stand over her. The rough of his finger pads stroked along her cheek, over the scars, cybernetics, and worn skin alike. Shepard took a sharp breath, sighing as she leaned her cheek into his palm.

With a lick of her kiss bitten lips she peered up into Javik's numerous eyes, "I'm not totally opposed to some selfishness."

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a final send off for my Shepard. She went through too much shit and I need her to be happy. Confession: the only ME3 ending I ever put the effort into getting was the unofficial one where you tell the catalyst to eat a dick and EVERYONE DIES. Ain't letting you run my life Bioware, I'm out of control.
> 
> Come hang with me over on [tumblr](http://bigevilshine.tumblr.com/), we can bitch about plots and shit together <3


End file.
